


Fractal XOR

by ShadowstarKanada



Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-12-10
Updated: 2002-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowstarKanada/pseuds/ShadowstarKanada
Summary: Bob thinks about how he lost everything and ended up in the web.
Kudos: 1





	Fractal XOR

The web was eating the plastic.

A little exponential algorithm raced through Bob's mind as he stared at the degredation, transfixed. Oh, vaguely in the back of his mind, something was telling him quite academically about the effects of shock (a lack of energy to one's neural networks causing a peculiar apathy; a slowing central voxel which tended to cause one to feel cold and begin to turn... well... blue) but the foreground was engaged in the entrancing vision.

Bob had always thought he'd die a hero. At the hands of a virus, perhaps, stopping their scheme and taking it with him. Or by the User, in some game where his skills were enough to win the game and save the system, but not himself. Destroying a threat by losing a game.

The fantasies sped through this mind now, and as always, Glitch was right there beside him.

Glitch had said he had a deletion wish once. Glitch had said they'd never be alone again. Glitch had said that he was getting too close to everyone in Mainframe: he was going to screw up and Glitch wasn't going to save him.

But why hadn't Glitch saved Glitch? Glitch was intelligent. Megabyte had taken Glitch and crushed the keytool, but why hadn't the keytool acted to save itself? Had it been waiting for Bob to save it?

Bob hadn't saved anyone. He'd given his protocol to Enzo, and without training, the little sprite would get himself nullified in some game. He'd left Mouse and Dot on a platform with two viruses. With Dot staring up at him and Mouse at a keyboard. If that wasn't a deleted sentence, he didn't know what was. Worst of all, he had lost himself to the web without saving Mainframe.

It was probably worse off now that Hex had her power cannon.

And Glitch had been crumpled like a silicon wafer by a virus.

And Bob? He'd done what he'd done all cycle since Glitch told him to distance himself. He'd screamed "No!" and just watched it happen.

A Guardian? What kind of Guardian got his keytool destroyed?

Bob pulled himself away from the memories, watching the degredation instead. It was very pretty. Almost fractal. Glitch would have liked it. Dot would have too, if he'd been able to get her eyes off her organizer. And Glitch would have said in no uncertain terms that a Guardian was not to fall in love with a Command-Dot-Com that didn't even know what she was.

But she was so very beautiful, and he'd been feeling so very alone, and Bob could tell that she felt the same, so how could it be so wrong? He asked Glitch that question, seconds before the web creature had arrived. Glitch hadn't answered, had become so silent that Bob feared he'd offended his keytool. And as Gigabyte had come towards Dot and Bob and Glitch, he'd heard - he'd heard... "Because you have to choose only one."

Bob hadn't really had time to think after that, everything had happened so fast. Dot hadn't been able to come up with a good plan, and Bob had always relied on Glitch to help him with his on the fly thinking. He'd been left with not even one of them to help him. An exclusive-or choice? It was more like a negated-and.

Bob frowned. Had Glitch really expected him to choose between the keytool and the girl he'd fallen in love with? It wasn't just random, it was like Glitch had a bug.

He'd been told though, warned in a million ways. Turbo had told him that keytools could be possessive. As a cadet, they'd been lectured on the responsibilities of having a keytool. How gaining a keytool was almost like losing the rest of your life. Even Glitch's previous owner, she who's name Bob would never again speak, had told him once that she loved Glitch with all her heart and could never regret the sacrifices.

Bob though... He had always had to have it all. He wanted the supercomputer and his experiment. He wanted the respect of the guardians and the love of virals. The Glitch and the Girl. He had never done things by halves before, and he didn't see any reason why he had to start now.

Except that trying to have it all had given him nothing.

And now the web was starting to pipe through the cracks in his little iPod. His only protection was beginning to expose him to the raw binary data outside.

Where it touched him, Bob felt... hot and cold? On and off? No, nothing so mundane that it would succumb to ordinary words. It was primal, instinctive... as though the User itself was somehow playing with his code.

And it came with the most glorious sound.

His code felt so alive, and he had never felt so niced... Fractals in his eyes, limbs being bathed in pure binary data, the sounds of modulating bits in his ears... He couldn't think of Dot or of Glitch or even of Bob: he was being torn into pieces, riding 1048 links to their final destination...

Bob passed out as the factal collapsed in.


End file.
